I’m coming from using reaper for the past few years, and prior to that I’ve used adobe audition and a little bit of sonar here and there… but I just picked up 8 pro and I just can’t seem to do the basic things I need to do… I understand that even if an interface is ’ intuitive ’ that doesn’t mean it’ll be intuitive to everyone… similar to people who find gimp/blender more natural than photoshop/maya…
long story short, I’m working on an album that contains ONLY vsti’s and I had my old studio machine bite the dust, so I have some botched old midi data that I plan on just reworking vst wise(I was using old school miroslav samples, now I own a boat load of instruments) and I picked up waves gold on sale for dirt cheap, then picked up C6 because it looked really useful… only to find out that it’s kind of a vst3 only thing - so I figured hey, I’m primarily a composer, Cubase seems to be ideal for composers(expression maps sound like they could be a godsend) but so far even BASIC tasks seem impossible… tasks like
adding a midi track… then putting a VST on it…
importing a midi track… then putting a vst on it…
importing a midi track for tempo markings(since I have a programmed click that includes tempo/sig changes)
adding busses
adding more than one VST to the same midi signal.
I really do want to learn this - but the official tutorials are just really cheesy plugs for the VST’s they want you to buy the full versions for… basic midi editing didn’t explain anything I needed to know but it sure did tell me all about a plugin I could care less about
adding a midi track… then putting a VST on it…
Project / Add track / MIDI. Then press F11 to open the VST Instruments rack. Activate the required VST Instrument (Rack Instruments menu). Select the VST Instrument in the output routing field of the MIDI track you want to use. Look in the Inspector of the MIDI track for the output routing field.
Or alternatively create an Instrument track instead…Project / Add track / Instrument.
importing a midi track… then putting a vst on it…
File / Import / MIDI file. And see 1) above
adding busses
Project / Add track / Group Channel
adding more than one VST to the same midi signal.
Copy the MIDI track and assign the VST instruments to each MIDI track as required.
See the manual for more details about how Instrument tracks, MIDI tracks and VST instruments are handled in Cubase.
you didn’t answer my question about the tempo and time signature question… it took me 4 days of owning it to even find out there WAS a manual… considering it comes with a 22 page one which tells you nothing really, then a bunch of useless videos… they certainly don’t point you towards it, and if I didn’t find a thread saying it’s called “operation manual” in the actual program I’d be searching for a long time…
all in all if you can’t import a midi with tempo and time signature events intact I’ll have to attempt to get some sort of refund from sweetwater or something… I’m not going to pay 550$ for something that can’t keep standard midi functionality… certainly not going to pay 550$ for a program to render stems in. that would be as bad as adobe audition not having a way to change tempo’s in a song… kind of crazy after so many versions of the software such a simple feature was left out…
I really am going to try to look at this manual, but Cubase so far is the least intuitive interface I’ve ever seen(apart from ableton)… and I’ve used a lot of 2d/3d/audio software suites, as well as many piece of software for making games/udk/unity/all the way back to rpg maker in 1995. but to be fair after 4 days I probably could have figured out more in ableton… I only used that for about 2 hours… at this rate I’d rather have spent my money on FLstudio hahaha
surprise! what is the difference between a vst rack and track? these are basic things that only serve to confuse anyone who isn’t already a Cubase user…
why can’t they just call it busses like in every other DAW?
they have a window called “VST connections” which has nothing to do with vst’s just routing your ins and outs…
how can a program just decide to use COMMON TERMS in a completely UNRELATED way, then turn around and have something like group channels, which would IMMEDIATELY be recognized if it were just called a BUS like in EVERY OTHER DAW. that’s like me saying “play the crash everytime we change keys” but not actually meaning change tonality, but meaning something ridiculous… like chords… technically the keyboard player “changed the keys” they were playing… but to the whole rest of the musical world we expect a change in the tonal center to be the event described…
I’m not sure what tutorials you are referring to but the Quick Start series pretty much just explain stuff and don’t try to push Steinberg products. Some of the others not so much.
It’s true some of the terminology Cubase uses differs from other DAWs, this is largely because it is one of the oldest DAWs out there, starting as a midi only sequencer in 1989, and came up with names in the absence of the current conventions about what things are called. So they named things like Group Channels before there was widespread use of calling them a buss. Likewise VST (Virtual Studio Technology), which Steinberg invented, refers to an entire underlying technology of which VSTi’s are only a small subset. VST Connections controls how the VST system connects to stuff. It was named this long before other folks adopted VST as a standard for building plug-ins.
Lastly the folks on this forum are very generous with their time in answering questions and helping out. To get the most out of the forums it tends to work best to ask one question in a post and have that question included as part of your subject line - that increases the odds that someone who knows the answer will actually read the post. Also you’ll get better results if you don’t come off as just whining and complaining.
Good luck with learning Cubase, it really is a great environment for composing.